Now that’s what I call a quick turnaround. Dream Theater were reported to be in the studio less than two months ago and they’ve already unveiled their new album! This will be their follow up to the 2013 self-titled effort and a whole discography of greatness beyond that. It will be known as “The Astonishing” and, with luck and a great deal of talent, it will turn out to be exactly that. The band has unveiled the astonishing cover art along with the full track listing. The full experience looks to have 34 TRACKS! If that’s not ambitious… I’m not sure what is. Take a gander and hear what they had to say of this:

“This album cover extends an ominous invitation into the retro-futurist dystopian setting of The Astonishing. The deceptively beautiful yet chillingly totalitarian image is a bold harbinger of the visual components and ideas presented by the sonic story that is our most ambitious creative work to date. We are very proud to soon bring you…The Astonishing.”

The band also just released a brand new track, “The Gift of Music”, through Rolling Stone which you can check below with an additional statement:

“The idea to do a concept album as a band felt right. The last one we did [1999’s Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory] was about 15 years ago, and it really felt like we were in a good place to do this. I knew that what needed to happen, first and foremost, is that we had to have a story to base this on, because the idea of basing an album off of a loose concept or something that was sort of arbitrary, that didn’t interest me at all. I wanted this not only to be a concept album, but really to write a full show. And to have all the elements in place, the story needs to drive that. We needed to have the storyline, a plot, places, characters, maps — you name it.

So that started about two and a half years ago; it took about a year for me to get that story done and ready to present to the guys. And I wanted to write from a place that was familiar to me, so I knew that music had to play a role in the story somehow. I’m a huge fan of the sci-fi and fantasy genres, so I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go. But it was a matter of really diving into it and working on it, revising and revising again, and working on it every day until I had something solid.”